In 2021, the biggest marketing tool next to your personal and professional relationships is supposed to be your law firm website. The funny thing is that as important as this tool is in marketing, most lawyer websites still fail to bring in new clients.
Sometimes it’s because lawyers believe referrals are the main source of gaining clients and they don’t invest in bringing people to their site. Other times, they do invest in bringing traffic, but the site experience is uninspiring leading to conversions that are equally depressing.
If your website has been poorly constructed and optimization is weak, it may be time to invest your time and effort into a new website. It needs to be attracting the right people, not just all people in general.
Let’s dive in.
How to Know if Your Website is the Problem
If you haven’t updated your website within the last 3 years, it’s probably time to call your web designer. If your site is less than 3 years old, then look at these telltale signs that you may need to invest in your website:
- It’s difficult for users to navigate.
- Your content is outdated or of low quality.
- You don’t have a blog (a great place for SEO content)
- The mobile version of the website is clunky
- There is very little digital media (photos and videos)
- You have not invested in search engine optimization (SEO).
- You are not running analytics.
- You don’t have case studies.
- No social media presence.
If you feel like any of these 9 website concerns, then buckle up and get ready because we are going to help you transform your site.
Let’s get started with navigation.
Don’t Lose Visitors Due to Poorly Designed Navigation Menus
Let’s think of the navigation like a map. If someone comes to your site, they need to be able to easily find their way around. In many circumstances, someone looking for a lawyer may not entirely know what they are looking for, they just know they need someone to help them with their situation. Your navigation should be clear and easy for someone who doesn’t know a lot about your profession to navigate.
- Service Areas
- Lists of legal services
- About Us
- Mission statement
- A bio of lawyers in the firm
- Resources
- Blog
- Any guides you may have
- Cases Studies
- Call for a Consultation (Contact Us)
The navigation menu of a law firm site is not something to lightly dismiss. For example, it’s the difference whether you use a menu item that says “Contact Us” or “Call for a Consultation” because every word matters and has the potential to make a different impact.
Here is an example of great navigation
What can better navigation options do for visitors?
- Increasing the duration of visit times.
- Increasing your return on investment.
- Improving the user’s experience.
- Improving your website’s design.
Navigation and design go hand in hand. We will discuss this later, but the design of your website will help with the navigation tremendously. When you use developers such as WordPress, you can easily integrate menu plug-ins that will help the user navigate more easily through your website.
Does Your Website Look Like It’s Running on Dial-up?
When your website runs slowly or looks like it was made in 2002, people are going to click off. WordPress, as we mentioned before, is a great place to start. When moving your site to WordPress, you don’t have to get a complete redesign to optimize your page for speed and have a better running website. WordPress is a cheaper option, with amazing features.
The benefits of WordPress include the following:
-
- Easy to use and to manage. When you are on a basic, HTML site, you will have to download complete, real HTML files, go through the code, and find what needs to be edited, then re-upload the HTML for anything you want to update. When you use WordPress, you can backup your website, choose what you want to update, and it will automatically do it for you.
- Consistent Design. HTML sites can do their best to be consistent, however, there is almost always an inconsistency, no matter how minuscule it is. With WordPress, you can base your website on an existing theme, or create your own, ridding your website of inconsistencies.
- Unlimited Plugins. Remember those pop-ups we mentioned earlier? Instead of struggling to figure out how to ask customers if they can help you through a pop-up or through an automated chat service, WordPress has easy plugins for you to add! Anything you can think of to add to your website, WordPress has it all.
- One of the best search engine optimization (SEO) platforms. Can’t seem to get your rankings up? That’s probably because your website isn’t SEO-friendly. WordPress websites rank extremely well with Google. There are more options for you to rank higher, such as WordPress SEO by the company Yoast. It is easily added and gives great tutorials on how to use the functions on all spaces of your website.
Start a Blog and Give Away Free Knowledge
Ever wondered how to get more people to visit your law firm’s website? The answer is simple: weekly blogs. Blogs give people a chance to have their Google searches answered by the experts — you!
Reasons you should consider adding a blog to your website:
- Search Engine Optimization. If you value SEO, then adding a blog will be the perfect place to start (or continue) your efforts. Search engines, such as Google, love content. The most important thing a law firm can do is produce consistent, high-quality content. It allows search engines to recognize that you are an expert in your field, resulting in higher rankings.
- Clients can find you easier. Although someone may search “car accident attorney” or “personal injury lawyer” they are more likely to search for a specific question before searching for those terms. A question someone may search, for example, would be “What happens if my dog bit someone at the dog park?” or “Can I sue for getting bitten by a dog at the dog park?” and if you have a blog on that topic, you are more likely to get a lead from your blog than if you only had a section on your website about dog bite services that didn’t answer their question.
- Displaying expertise and engaging with your field. Just because you are a lawyer doesn’t mean you’re an expert. You have to convince people that you are the right lawyer for them and convince search engines that you know what you’re talking about. Your content should be evergreen, original, display authors with biographies, compassionate with emotional connections, and show readers what it might be like to have you as an attorney.
Blogging isn’t the only way to do this, but it is a great step into the world of content marketing. Other ways you can achieve the above is by creating content such as guides, case studies, etc. throughout your website and even sharing it all on social media. Creating a blog here because it is a good introduction, it’s easy to do (even if time-consuming), and it can be a valuable asset.
Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?
50% of all searches are done on mobile devices. It is becoming more and more popular for people to not even own a computer, but rather a phone or tablet.
If more and more people are using their phones for quick internet searches such as “What to do if I was injured at work?” or “personal injury lawyer,” doesn’t it worry you that your mobile website can’t convert these searches to paying clients?
If your site doesn’t convert to a mobile-friendly site, that potential client is likely to leave your site and choose another law firm. This could cost you hundreds of clients per day!
With a new, updated site, you won’t have to worry about making HTML changes for your mobile version. It will automatically transform when someone opens your website on a phone, even if you are making changes to your desktop site regularly.
Lack of Media
If your website is lacking photos or videos, then there is a chance your website is pretty boring.
Now, we know you are not boring, so adding some images and videos throughout your website can help your visitors get to know you better, and pay better attention to the information in your message.
Did you know that people are more likely to remember information if there are images and videos? This means that if you have good media on your site, your visitors are more likely to remember you.
People relate to videos and photos. When you skip over adding media, you are missing out on the easy opportunity to make a more tangible connection to your audience. Adding an “About Us” section on your website, gives you a natural place to insert photos of your company, your building, your lawyers, etc.
Photographs, videos, and podcasts can give your potential clients a more emotional attachment to your firm. They can see that there are real people who are behind the website, rather than just words on a page.
Get Better Search Results By Switching to WordPress
If you have been trying to get your website ranking higher in popular search engines, and you just can‘t seem to get where you want to be, it may not be your fault. Google and other search engines tend to favor WordPress websites due to:
- WordPress focusing on user experience
- It helps you create permalinks that don’t look like coffee spilled on your keyboard
- WordPress allows you to manage your metadata easily
- WordPress allows you to easily optimize your images for SEO
- Page speed and loading times aren’t an issue for WordPress sites
- WordPress optimizes for your mobile users
- There are plugins specifically designed by WordPress for SEO
- WordPress is easily integrated with external software
- Their themes are SEO-friendly
Each point listed above is something that Google, Bing, and Yahoo look for when they are crawling your website for rankings. Making sure your website is SEO-friendly is one of the biggest attractions to search engines.
Case Studies
According to a study done by BrightLocal, 93% of people used the internet to find a local business, with 34% of people searching every day, and 87% of people read online reviews in 2020 – up from the 81% in 2019. So what do these stats mean for your law firm’s case studies?
Case studies for lawyers are the same thing as Yelp reviews for lawyers.
Case studies are important! People need to see a real success story. They want to know that you can help them. Lawyers need case studies on their website. This can easily be added to your site with a WordPress design.
- Building trust with your potential clients
- Helps answer common questions that potential clients may have
- Gives potential clients a feeling of prior knowledge about your firm
- Can be easily cross-promoted on social platforms
Social Media Presence
Social media dominates leisure time. Statista shows that globally about 3.96 billion people spend an average of 144 minutes per day on social media. If your website can’t convert your blog posts, your case studies, etc. onto social media accounts, why even have a website?
People, including prospective clients, love to share news and tips on social media. Social media can also:
- Bringing in additional traffic. Another way to grab organic traffic is through promoting your social media on your website and promoting your website on your social media.
- Give your clients and future clients new ways to engage with your firm.
- If you allow your blogs and information to be shared on social channels, you are more likely to have clients sharing and promoting your content. For example, integrating a WordPress site with Facebook can allow your visitors to share the posts with one single click, leading to more exposure, views, and reach.
Knowledge is Power and Analytics Are Vital!
The best solution to finding out how well your website is really doing is by paying attention to your analytics. You need to be sure Google Analytics is hooked up so you can see what your website traffic looks like and how many of your visitors are actually converting into potential leads. If your traffic is low – that’s a problem. If your traffic is high and your leads are low – that could also be a problem.
It is also used to see what pages are working on your website and which ones are not. What blogs and other content are your visitors spending time on, and which ones are they passing by. This will let you know what you should do more of, what to change, and what you should stop doing.
We have mentioned throughout this blog that user experience is extremely important to search engines. If you have poor page speeds or high bounce rates, wouldn’t you want to know? Backend analytics such as MonsterInsights will help you with all of that!
Between figuring out what content is or isn’t working, how your SEO efforts are going, tracking referrals and where they come from, understanding how your outbound links are doing, and more, wouldn’t you want to know if your website is doing what it’s supposed to?
GetVisible
Your website should have far more than the typical 4 categories (home page, about us, services, and contact). It should also have more than 100 words on each different page. If you are lacking content and pages, that will be your first sign of needing a new website.
If you are in need of a new website for your law firm, look no further. Our web design experts will lead you in the right direction and help increase your clientele in no time.
Don’t let 2010 steal clients from you! Contact us and update your website today.
